


d.c. al fine

by restez



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:49:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22442086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/restez/pseuds/restez
Summary: Katara has ripped apart at the seams many times before, throughout dozens of distinct dimensions where different possibilities have lead to the same broken heart.or:Katara and Zuko manage to find each other in every universe and life they reincarnate into.
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 52





	d.c. al fine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been waiting in my drafts for such a long time, so I'm a bit nervous about publishing it! I honestly thought this story would just stay as a WIP forever, but... _ **surprised pikachu face.**_
> 
> I wrote this as a revised and hopefully improved version of a [previous fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17881856) I wrote that I'm not that proud of. It was so short and rushed that I never got to fully explore the ideas I had, but it didn't feel right to just delete it, either. So this is the result >_<
> 
> I have this fic planned out, but not completely written yet, so updates will be sporadic! Also: this might defeat the purpose of choosing not to use any archive warnings, but please believe the 'Angst with a Happy Ending' tag lol; I promise you there's a reason why I didn't include the 'Major Character Death' tag.

This Zuko has lost most of everything, so he fights with desperate ferocity to keep what he has left and pushes away everything else.

When they arrive at his camp, he welcomes them with no smile and a fence around every word. His eyes are incendiary, lit by a blaze that holds none of the kind warmth of a fireplace. He’s hurtfully unforgiving, an inexorable wall of flame, and it clashes horribly with Katara’s great tide of fury. 

“If you want to live,” he says, rising to his feet, “we follow _my_ orders.”

“ _Your_ orders are unreasonable,” she spits back, fearlessly surging toward him with clenched fists. “Everyone’s fed up with how you’re running this place!”

“Then leave!” Zuko snaps, cheeks flushed with anger. “Nobody’s asking you to stay. If you’d rather become one of _them_ than be here, why should I stop you?”

He stalks off, leaving his dinner to go cold at the table. Katara watches him walk away, shocked and furious.

“He’s a jerk,” she says later to Sokka, when they’re preparing their beds for sleep. “I can’t _stand_ him.”

Her brother looks wearily over at her. 

(She sees the sharp turn of his jaw, the dark circles around his eyes, and the frown pressed deep into his face—her stomach twists.)

“I know you can’t. Neither can I. But what are we gonna do?” He flops onto his thin mattress. “The van’s wrecked, and we won’t make it if we try to walk anywhere. This is the safest place we can be for now.”

 _He’s right_ , she knows, but the part of her that has always rebelled against set parameters still roars. 

_One day, we’ll be strong enough_ , Katara promises herself, staring up at the ceiling as people snore around her. They won’t need Zuko then, and they won’t hesitate to leave, either, just as he told them to do.

\--

A few days later, Azula gets shot while out on patrol. 

Zuko’s face is ashen when their medics (a small group of no more than three people, including Katara) carry his injured sister into the infirmary.

“We were ambushed,” sobs her teammate, crouched at his feet. “There were so _many_ of them, and I—I panicked. I’m _so_ sorry.” 

There’s no heat in Zuko’s expression, only the coldest kind of fear. He stays by Azula’s side and holds her hand like he’s afraid to touch her. 

“Just go take care of your injuries,” he replies, keeping his head bowed down. His gaze follows Katara’s hands as she examines the wound on the side of Azula’s stomach. “Please.”

Despite his orders, the boy kneeling on the ground cries and apologizes for another handful of minutes before somebody manages to drag him out. Zuko is quiet all the while, pale and awfully shaken. When Katara glances up from her work to look at him, she doesn’t see the arrogant hardass from only an hour before—only a young man afraid to lose once more. 

“She’s going to be okay,” she reassures, once she’s certain. “The bullet only grazed her.”

A breath, harsh and sharp and bloated with emotion. Zuko’s face nearly crumples in relief, and for the first time, Katara sees a crack in his mask. Underneath all that spitfire and hellfire, maybe there’s someone with a soft heart, after all. (A soft heart she thought wouldn’t survive in a dying world like this.)

The other two medics let Katara dress Azula’s injury by herself. Though none of them had gotten a chance to graduate from med school, she’s the one with more experience (more from all those days out on the road, fixing up her brother’s injuries, than from the practice she’d gotten from any internship). 

In this corner of the infirmary, Katara feels as if the universe shrinks itself into a private bubble. She hears Zuko’s breathing, carefully timed to match Azula’s. With the warm sunlight against her back like this, she can almost trick herself into thinking her life’s rewound itself—back, back, _back_ to when they were safe and happy and comfortable. 

“Azula and I didn’t always get along.” Zuko’s voice brings her out of her reverie, but Katara’s glad for it. It never does her any good to dwell on the past (on what things once were and had been). “You know. Before all this shit happened.”

She brings out the bandages and makes a noise of understanding. He still hasn’t lifted his head, hasn’t taken his eyes off his sister since she’d come back into the camp. “You argued a lot?”

“I think we hated each other. I don’t know.” He sighs, rubbing his eyes tiredly. “But she’s all I have now. It took the world ending to get me to realize that I’ve always loved my sister—in a way.”

Suddenly, Zuko looks up, and the light that streams through the window (through the cracks of the boards) ignites his eyes into a brilliant amber, like the embers of a lingering fire. It catches Katara off guard, and she falters (for just a second, but it’s enough). 

“I didn’t mean what I said,” he tells her softly, in the sort of whisper you use when sincerity takes all the volume out of your voice. “I don’t want anything to happen to you or to Sokka, and I’m not asking you to leave, either.” He looks at his and Azula’s hands. “But I understand if you want to.” 

(This is a story of loss: of living with a ghost story inside of you, of leaving things behind even though you’re holding on with hands that are already letting go, of having the world take from you until you have scarcely enough pieces to put yourself back together again.

When this sort of story finally gives back—like this, in the corner of an infirmary where the idea of a home abruptly becomes a possibility—what do you do?

What should Katara do?)

“We won’t leave,” she says with difficulty, swallowing back a torrent of emotions that gather thickly in her throat. “Sokka and I—we’ll help you run this place.”

Zuko stares up at her (—and for a moment, there is a vivid memory of him leaning out his bedroom window, peering down at her with the sort of scandalized face befitting of a midnight tryst—but that’s impossible; Katara has never known Zuko outside of the apocalypse; _had she?_ ). “Okay.”

The word is a mere rasp even in the silence of their small bubble, but it sticks in Katara’s heart, and she will remember it later on.

(Even in futures beyond this one.)

\--

It’s the week after when everything (or most of it) slowly starts to come back to her. 

They’re at breakfast when Zuko sends out the day’s patrol team. Among them is the boy from Azula’s group, who listens to their leader’s every word with a gravely serious face before heading out. 

“Honestly,” she says, coming up to him when she’s finished her meal, “I thought you’d kick him out or something.”

It’s mostly a joke, but he looks at her, stunned. “I’d never kick someone out just for making a mistake.” Zuko crosses his arms, distracted. “I’m not like that.”

 _Not like your father_ , she thinks—and stops. 

Where did _that_ come from?

She feels as if she's on the precipice of realizing something—something that lies within the familiarity of Zuko’s posture, the way he speaks, and the look in his eyes when he sees her. 

_Maybe_ , Katara thinks desperately. Maybe he just reminds her of someone from the Before, someone from her university or from high school, a long forgotten someone who only exists in some barely retrievable memory.

“—Katara?” Zuko calls, and she snaps back to reality. “Are you okay?”

“Y—Yeah.” She smiles when he doesn’t look convinced. “I’m fine!”

( _But_ , whispers some small part of her, deep inside, _this_ _is where everything begins to go wrong._ )

\--

“Do you think the world will ever go back to normal?” Katara asks.

They’re sitting off to the side, watching the others eat and laugh together around the dinner table. The scene is peaceful, and only an observant eye would be able to recognize the tension that lingers in the set of their shoulders. They are always on the alert.

“I don’t think so,” replies Zuko, quiet and honest. “It’s been too long, and even if it did”—he takes a deep breath, but his voice still trembles—”nothing would be the same.”

( _We have lost too much, and the ghost stories within ourselves have grown far too big._ )

“Maybe we have to start thinking of all of this as normal.” She hugs her knees against her chest and gives him a sidelong look. “And start looking for a home somewhere in all of this, too.”

Zuko takes her words very seriously, like he always does, and considers them for a long moment. 

( _Déja vu_ : his profile cast in shadows by the strong light of the fire; the small space between them that is only the width of a hand but enough of a distance to conjure an inexplicable feeling of absence in her core; he tilts his head, thoughtfully, with her name a heavy weight on his lips—

 _Already seen_.)

“It’s been a long time since I’ve felt safe,” he tells her, turning to meet her gaze. “But having you here—it’s the closest I’ve felt to it in a while.”

What is this feeling?

This feeling that she’s heard this line before—not in any quiet confession or whispered truth, but in a love letter, unfolded past midnight and read by candlelight. These sorts of words can belong to no one else but Zuko.

But how is that _possible_?

(Maybe she _has_ known him before, in a different permutation of reality. Somewhere else in the past and future, are they falling in love on a planet that doesn’t seem so temporary?)

“Thank you,” whispers Zuko, “for choosing to stay back then.”

 _i have never met somebody who has fit the definition of home as perfectly as you do_ , she thinks. _what is it about you that feels like the end of a long, long journey back to familiarity?_

Thank you, he says, for choosing to stay.

(Thank you, he said, for loving me as a choice and not as a possibility.)

“Can I kiss you?”

Even in the dark, she sees the tips of his ears go red. “I was being serious.”

“I know,” Katara reassures. “So am I.”

“Oh.” He utters it as more of a small gasp than an actual word, and even this trivial thing makes her heart lurch. “If—if you want to—sure.”

Katara leans forward.

There are no fireworks, no sparks of electricity, no trumpets that play a fanfare in her head. 

Instead, Zuko catches her with steady hands, and they settle—predictable and familiar like a candle in the dark. There’s a rhythm to Zuko’s burn that Katara’s tide recognizes, all too easily, all too readily.

(This, as well, is a permutation, another version, an echo of what has come before.)

Katara feels a hundred universes compressed into the span of a single second, and the sensation lingers in the air even after they part. 

This face on him—dazed and dumbstruck, silenced by kisses—is also a reprise. 

\--

“There are a few houses somewhere beyond the safe zone. If we manage to get there, we could get a bunch of supplies to last us through the winter.” Sokka looks up from his map, face somber. “I don’t know how many of them are out there though. If it’s anything like that horde that passed by a few months ago…”

“We have to take the risk,” says Azula, poring over the map once more. “We’re low on food, and if anybody gets hurt again, we’re not going to have any of the stuff we need to help them. I don’t think we have another option.” 

Zuko nods and crosses his arms resolutely. “Let’s get out there as soon as we can. You, me, Sokka, and Katara.”

A chill creeps down Katara’s spine; her hands shake.

By now, most of the memories have come back in full, and she knows—

_there’s only a matter of time._

“No,” she interjects, and everybody looks at her in surprise. “They need you here, Zuko. You have to be here to protect them.”

He stares, mouth open. “I think they can handle themselves. They wouldn’t have gotten this far if they couldn’t.” His brows knit together in confusion. “Besides, I’m good at getting up on roofs and things. That could come in handy if the doors are boarded shut.”

“So is Azula,” she insists. 

“Thank you for the upvote,” Azula chimes in, “but the more people we have on this mission, the better. We’ll be able to carry more supplies back that way, and if there are as many of those things out there as we think there are, then we’ll have more muscle power to overwhelm them.”

It makes sense, but the ground is crumbling beneath her feet like sand in an hourglass.

“Zuko,” she tries again. “Stay here. _Please_.”

“Katara, is something wrong?” Sokka asks, coming closer to her. The concern on his face wrenches her gut into a tight knot.

She wants to tell the truth, but who would believe her? This isn’t the first time she’s begged fate for a reprieve. 

( _More time_ ; the voice of a previous incarnation rings in her ear. _Just a little more time. Please._ ) 

“Okay,” Zuko concedes when she gives nothing but silence in response. “I’ll stay in the camp. Jin can go in my place.”

Azula and Sokka exchange a glance but don’t argue. 

Later, when they’re ready to leave, Katara takes his hand in hers and says firmly, “Stay close to the camp, okay?”

Zuko smiles, but she sees the confusion in his eyes. “Promise me you’ll be careful?”

“Oh, don’t you worry about me,” she teases (though he won’t recognize this old joke); her hands throb with how tightly she grasps his. “I have plenty of strength.”

One more kiss—a short peck against his chapped lips, and then they leave. 

She looks back more than once to make sure he’s still there.

\--

The other shoe drops.

When they come back from their mission, Zuko isn’t there to let them in, and the entire camp is solemn. 

“Where’s Zuko?” demands Azula, already distraught.

 _He went out to take care of a small pack that was passing by_ , they say, faces pale. _He said he could take care of it by himself, that no one else would get hurt this way—but he hasn’t come back._

 _This is it?_ she thinks numbly. _No final goodbye?_

(Remember: this is a story of loss.)

Katara has ripped apart at the seams many times before, throughout dozens of distinct dimensions where different possibilities have lead to the same broken heart. This time, the unravelling of everything is slow.

Zuko disappears, and Katara carries on.

Sokka asks her to slow down, but she has to keep moving: there are people to heal and medics to train and supplies to find and missions to run and a million other things to get done 

“Katara.”

and she can’t stop not for a minute not for a second

“ _Katara_.”

because if she does if she does ifshedoes

“ _Fuck_ —Katara, listen to me!”

Azula grabs her shoulders and practically throws her down into a chair. Her hair is a mess, and there are bags under her eyes, an angry stain left behind by days spent out in the forest, relentlessly searching; she’s in the process of breaking apart, shattering, and talking to Katara, trying to get her to _breathe_ , seems to be the last thing she wants to worry about.

But here she is, and the expression on her face is a wound left open to the air. 

“You need to come back to us,” whispers Azula. “You need to stay with us.”

( _Thank you for choosing to stay back then_.)

This is how they decide to move their camp elsewhere.

 _One day, we’ll be strong enough_ , she remembers thinking all those nights ago. 

But now, as she stands at the threshold of a world she has known and a world that’s to come, she thinks, _I don’t know if it’s because I’m strong enough or too weak_.

Katara doesn’t look back this time.


End file.
